U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah will travel to Atlanta October 2 to participate in the annual Catalyst Conference where he will talk to the faith community about USAID’s mission to end extreme poverty around the world by 2030 as well as USAID’s response to global crises like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Administrator Shah will engage in a question and answer session with Catalyst Conference Director Tyler Reagin on the main stage at 10:15 a.m. EDT.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Global Health Ariel Pablos-Mendez is in Cape Town, South Africa through October 3 for the Third Global Symposium on Health Systems Research. The conference focuses on cutting-edge research that addresses the development of people-centered health systems.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Nancy Lindborg will be in Liberia September 30 through October 2 as a part of a U.S. Government delegation led by Department of Defense Assistant Secretary for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict Michael Lumpkin. The delegation is meeting with local officials, aid organizations, and staff coordinating the U.S. Government’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

GE Africa (NYSE: GE) and the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today announced 22 winners in the second round of their Power Africa Off-Grid Energy Challenge. Selected from nearly 300 applicants, each winner will receive a grant of up to $100,000 to support the deployment of off-grid solutions that put renewable resources
to work to power increased economic activity.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today announced up to $90 million in funding over five years for education programs in Lebanon and Jordan, in support of the No Lost Generation Initiative. The funding will go toward strengthening the school systems, the education curriculum and social cohesion for Lebanese and Jordanian communities, and the Syrian refugees they are hosting.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a $10 million award to the UN World Food Program to provide food assistance to close to 220,000 people most severely affected by drought and coffee rust in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Secretary John Kerry and USAID Associate Administrator Mark Feierstein announced the U.S. Government support at a meeting with the three foreign ministers in advance of the UN General Assembly.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today awarded Kansas State University a $50 million grant to establish a Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Sustainable Intensification. The grant supports USAID’s agricultural research and capacity building work under Feed the Future, the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative.

New Fund Models a Venture Capital Approach to Solving Global Development Challenges

The United States, United Kingdom, Swedish, and Australian Governments, in partnership with Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm, announced today the launch of a new $200 million Global Innovation Fund (GIF) headquartered in London at the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Countdown event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Speaking together, UK Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah outlined the ambitious global vision and scope of the new Fund, which will invest in social innovations that aim to improve the lives and opportunities of millions of people in the developing world. The Global Innovation Fund uses a venture capital-like approach to investing in a wide range of social innovations, drawing on the success of the industry to discover and support innovative ventures that have the potential to scale across the developing world.

Illegal rhino horn trade has reached the highest levels since the early 1990s, and illegal trade in ivory increased by nearly 300 percent from 1998 to 2011, according to a new report by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) partner TRAFFIC. “This report provides critical insights into often violent and complex trade networks that will help countries target their law enforcement efforts. Wildlife trafficking not only endangers rhinos, elephants, and many other wildlife species, but also threatens national and international security as well as local livelihoods,” said Eric Postel, Assistant Administrator at USAID.

Today, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and The Rockefeller Foundation announced a $50 million commitment by the Swedish government to the Global Resilience Partnership and the launch of the Global Resilience Challenge at the USAID Frontiers in Development forum.

The City of Dakar announced today its plans to issue the first non-sovereign-backed municipal bond in all of Sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. The $41.8 million bond, backed by a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Development Credit Authority bond guarantee, will raise funds for the construction of a marketplace for more than 3,500 street vendors

Today, I thank the Senate for confirming Ambassador Al Lenhardt as Deputy Administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development. With a critical mission of ending extreme poverty and delivering life-saving American assistance to people in need all around the world, a key priority of mine is filling important vacancies across the Agency with exceptional individuals.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and UK Department for International Development (DFID) are co-hosting “Innovating for Impact: The MDGs and Beyond” in partnership with the Governments of Australia and Sweden and the Omidyar Network. This MDG Countdown event will feature the announcement of a new Global Innovation Fund (GIF) to provide grants and risk capital to social enterprises, for-profit firms, non-profit organizations, researchers, and government agencies working on breakthrough solutions to global development challenges.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will hold the second Frontiers in Development forum at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. September 18-19, 2014. The two day event will engage a dynamic community of global thought leaders and development practitioners to address the question: How will we eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 and lay the groundwork for a broad coalition of partners committed to this goal?

The United States announced today that it will support the African Union’s (AU) urgent deployment of trained and equipped medical workers to West Africa—the single largest injection of critical personnel to the region—to help combat the Ebola outbreak. With this contribution of $10 million, the United States has spent more than $100 million responding to the Ebola outbreak. This funding complements USAID’s announcement last week of plans to make available up to $75 million in additional funding.

Today, at the Social Capital Markets conference (SOCAP), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced three public-private partnerships to catalyze private investment towards early-stage enterprises and foster financially sustainable enterprise incubation in developing countries. The U.S. Global Development Lab (Lab) is partnering with Village Capital, Shell Foundation, and Unitus Seed Fund to drastically scale-up these efforts and combined will leverage nearly $40 million with a $6.3 million investment made by the Lab.